


Ruined

by anticipatewrites



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 12:46:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16598174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anticipatewrites/pseuds/anticipatewrites
Summary: A dark night on the beaches of Tybee Island reminds the reader of what she’s lost and what she’s willing to let go.





	Ruined

It's ruined now. The acrid smoke burns my nose. The power I felt when I struck the match feels hollow on the other side of the flames. I made the thing and then I destroyed it. The oil paint doesn't make the canvas burn any differently than it would have without it. The answer to a question I'm not sure if I asked yet. 

The wind blows strongly from the north tonight. Too strong. The flames dance in time with the black sand, making shifting patterns in the dark. I'm sitting on what was once a tree in a distant life. Smooth where rough bark once lived. Through some violence, it became a temporary refuge to small aquatic creatures, recorded in the tracks and holes, and it had floated in the salty water off the Georgia coastline before landing here. Now it was mine, for a time. 

The driftwood keeps me from the sand. Between my boot-clad feet lies the canvas bearing the image I was once most proud of. Fifty thousand dollars, a man offered me when it was on display at Ex Libris downtown a year ago. It was worth a million. And now it's nothing. 

Nothing. 

Nothing. 

The flames, breathing their last, despite the harsh wind, take his eyes at the end. Because, of course they do. That green had been almost impossible to replicate, but I had done it. Cadmium yellow, cyan, a mixture of cerulean and cobalt. Wasted so much paint getting the color just right. Expensive, those eyes. In more ways than one. 

A mistake. Oh god, this was a mistake. I fall to my knees in the damp, shifting black sand. Nothing left but ashes now. Reaching out to the dying embers, the last piece I had of the man who held my heart disintegrated through my fingers. 

Silent, I crouched there beneath the bark-less branches of a once-great oak, holding the crumbling pieces in my hands. The wind whispers through the sea grass at my back and I hear his voice once again, can feel his strong fingers card through my hair. 

‘Always. I'll always be with you. No matter what, you're my girl.’ 

For a moment, he is here. And then, like the salt laden wind, he’s gone. 

There's nothing to compare to desolation. To the fullness of everything and then it's absence. 

I leave the crumbling, wooden frame that once held my greatest accomplishment on the shores of Tybee Island, black sand clinging to my boots, and I wonder if I'll ever find something greater than those bright green eyes.


End file.
